MAURY, Jean-Siffrein. — Cardinal, b. at Valreas (Avignon) on 26 June 1746, d. at Rome on 11 May 1817. Member of the Académie française from 1785, in 1787 he became an adviser to Lamoignon, who intended to carry out major judicial reforms. Representative of the clergy in the Estates-General of 1789, after 14 July he attempted to leave France but was arrested at Péronne.
He then became the antagonist of Mirabeau and the leading defender, within the Assembly, of the rights of the Pope and the Church. After vigorously opposing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, he fled France in 1791, stopping first at Coblenz before reaching Rome. Created by Pius VI Archbishop of Nicaea, he was later Bishop of Montefiascone and finally a cardinal (1794). In 1804 he refused to serve as ambassador to the exiled king and placed himself at the service of Bonaparte, even accepting from him the position of vicar capitular of Paris; this act was reproached to him in a brief of 5 November 1810 by Pius VII, then a prisoner of the Emperor. After Napoleon’s defeat he was confined in Castel Sant’Angelo and forced to resign his bishopric, but was later freed through the intercession of Cardinal Consalvi. He wrote an *Essai sur l'éloquence de la chaire*.